Jason Alexander: “If I tried to engineer the right choices in my career, I would not have been able to do it”

How do you give advice on advancing an acting career if you feel like you mostly achieved success by pure luck?

That’s a question Jason Alexander — who will eternally be known for his role as George Costanza on Seinfeld –has to face as he conducts master classes on acting at school across the country — something he has done for over a decade. While speaking at Utah Valley University, however, Alexander explained that he while he can talk about the craft of acting, it’s difficult for him to give advice on how to become a professional.

To clarify: Alexander struggled for close to a decade in small, bit parts in films and television series until 1989, when he was cast in a show on Broadway — Jerome Robbins’ Broadway — that he wasn’t keen on doing. But the silver lining was that he won a Tony Award for the play.

That Tony Award launched his career in an unexpected direction. He revealed, “The Tony somehow led to me being cast in Pretty Woman,” though Alexander claims that director Garry Marshall “categorically” did not want him cast. But that role lead to his audition for Seinfeld, and the rest is history.

The ultimate lesson is that Alexander had no “The point of it all being — if I tried to engineer the right choices in my career, I would not have been able to do it,” he said. “I fell into a career, so the one thing I cannot talk about is how to go from an amateur career to a professional career because the way it happened to me was just a miracle. And I have been so surprised by where it has taken me.”

So remember actors — the role you might pass up might be the first domino to fall to get your career moving!

‘Phantom Thread’ Star Lesley Manville: “It’s so easy to make someone bad look good on film. In theatre, there’s no hiding place”

"Filming is different. You’re getting a moment right. You can go in and create something very good, very quickly. That’s a different challenge to having five, six weeks to rehearse a play.” - Lesley Manville